Distractions
by Turquoisephoenix
Summary: While Klungo works on the machines that will drain her beauty and youth away, Tooty has an idea that might stall the project and buy her brother a little more time, no matter how many memories she accidentally digs up in the process... [One-shot]


While drawing my entry for a Banjo-Kazooie fanzine, I started writing a companion story to it just for fun and writing practice. I ended up getting carried away, and attached to it is a bunch of personal ideas I have for Klungo's backstory.

Plus Tooty is a character that I kinda wish saw more use in the fandom (I mean her being discarded after the first game doesn't help her case but still) and I always liked the notion that somehow, after the events of Tooie, the two of them became friends, with Tooty even becoming more science-orientated than her brother, who's more down-to-earth.  
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Characters:** Klungo, Tooty, Gruntilda (mentioned), Clanker (mentioned), the bear and bird (very lightly mentioned)

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In this nondescript summer's day - a boring sort of day where the bees buzzed and the leaves rustled in the warm, sunny breeze - a talented scientist was fine-tuning the greatest experiment of his life, one that would cure the persistent magical corruption in his boss and make her youthful again.

That was the **nice** way of putting it, if one didn't mention that the scientist was a mutated hunchbacked goblin-like creature named Klungo, the experiment wasn't an unstable contraption with a high body rate in small rodent test subjects, and his boss wasn't Gruntilda, a gross, belching witch who used her own cauldron as a toilet and had just committed a kidnapping out of pure spite.

" _Always gotta keep a positive outlook on these things_ ," Klungo thought to himself with a tiny smile as he flicked a globule of blue, glowing ooze from his workstation as he reconfigured the wiring in one of his Beauty Suckers. Name, patent, and copyright pending. Klungo never was very good with names.

This beautiful summer day started sour for him. The first ten minutes or so of the experiment today had to be wasted in order to explain to Mistress Gruntilda just why he couldn't immediately throw the switch and be done with it in a matter of minutes, but instead needed quite a few hours. _**Days**_ even.

Gruntilda...did not take that bit of news very well, he thought to himself as he gently nursed part of his monstrous jaw where one of the objects she threw at him connected. Gruntilda was _not_ a patient employer; after Klungo finally explained with paper work and concrete evidence of past experiments that if he flipped the switch now, the chances of her turning inside out were alarmingly high, she stomped off in a huff and decided to amuse herself by shouting out threats to Tooty's brother, now marching ever upward in her lair.

 _That was a problem too_ , Klungo noted to himself miserably, his smile turning into a grimace. All of his experiments before didn't have a _**time limit**_ attached to them. And now he had to get this machine to work before some revenge-seeking bear mauled him.

Klungo as a scientist was a very meticulous worker; his experiments took years, with the Clanker project spanning almost a decade in fine-tuning and still wasn't, in his head, considered finished. He wasn't expecting to wake up today and suddenly be ordered to use one of his machines, a machine he hadn't even properly tested yet without blowing up or mutating the unfortunate animals inside, on both his boss and a girl he's never seen before.

If only Mistress had given him the proper measurements of the child he was running through the machine ahead of time instead of expecting him to make a slipshod job of the whole matter, if only she wasn't so rash in presuming that he'd conform to her random changes in thought...he tried his best to keep his temper in check. No use ruining his whole day by being angry at things beyond his control.

Plus he had to admit, the henchman was practically thrumming with excitement to see this machine, this concept that had been lying around unused for years, finally see use. A twisted mockery of a smile lit his face. If this worked, the Mistress promised in a sing-song voice as she gently grasped his chin, then the second user would be him. Yes, **_him_**. We can use that idiot brother of her's. Only she used a lot more rhyming.

Maybe he can actually call his wife after all these years...

Thoughts of his wife and the panicked stream of consciousness wondering just how many months have passed since last contact that followed immediately started to cloud his mind, so he turned to look at the key ingredient in the experiment. "Tooty" ( _the locals always did have weird names_ , Klungo noted) was right where he left her, still inside her chamber. Not that she had anywhere to run with that laser grid in place - Klungo spent a good forty minutes setting that up too - but with all the wild, untamed magicks on the island, Klungo would also not be surprised if the local bear life in Spiral Mountain knew any teleportation spells.

The young child had ceased calling him names or yelling about how much her brother was going to beat him up and now sat curled in a fetal position, her head resting on the crook of her knees as she stared out in mute terror at her green captor.

The first hour or so, she was kicking and screaming and spitting at Klungo as he was writing down appropriate data for his tests. Years of living with Gruntilda - who could do far, far worse than anything Tooty could throw at him - had tempered his patience and he merely held the bear down with a firm but gentle hand as he did things like weight and height measurements. She did draw blood with her tiny bear claws a couple of times, but Klungo was used to tiny furry animals attacking him before he ran them through the Beauty Sucker. If they knew what their sacrifices were for, they'd be much more grateful.

This quiet change in behavior in the bear was fine with Klungo. The way he saw it, a silent, motionless test subject made his work easier and will make the experiment run more smoothly. With a snort, he turned back to the control panel. Let the little girl mope.

He continued to input code into his machine - hopefully his data on Gruntilda's mass and bone density hasn't changed since her last questionnaire - but with his attention off of Tooty, he didn't notice the subtle change in expression on the bear's face.

Tooty had an idea.

"Err...Mr. Mungo?"

"Klungo." he said automatically. It was the first thing Tooty had said to him that wasn't a personal insult or a threat, but the scientist was too focused on his work to have any sort of opinion on the matter.

"Mr. _Klungo._ Um..." Tooty hesitated a bit, desperately searching for a topic of conversation. She was unsure if he was smart enough to see this as an obvious distraction tactic. "Why do you have that lisp?"

"Klungo'sss tongue too long for Klungo mouth. Klungo mouth alssso hasss teeth that make talking chore." he said in a bored tone without looking up, fingers still tapping away at buttons and knobs. If the little girl was going to insult him, she was going to have to do better than that, he thought sourly to himself. If she asked him why his eyes were two different sizes, his next answer wasn't going to be so polite.

Tooty grumbled to herself and then looked up towards the ceiling, tapping her foot. This was harder than she thought. She never was one for idle chatter. That was more Bottles' thing.

Minutes passed in relative silence but the faint buzz of machinery, and then a tiny voice ran out in the laboratory.

"Where are you from, Klungo?" Tooty asked.

Klungo's hand stopped. He looked up, his brow furrowed. It was a small question, a light conversational topic, but it was also the first time in years that anyone showed interest in Klungo's life and not so much whatever machine he was working on or how ugly he was. It was the tiniest of tiny acts of kindness, not completely earnest, but it was enough. Tooty had found the chink in his armor.

"Ssst. Petersssburg and later London?" Klungo answered, confused. This was a question he had answered many, many times in his life, especially in medical school.

Tooty remained silent. Klungo nibbled on his lip.

"Klungo from Motherland."

The tiny bear child began to tilt her head to one side. With a grunt, Klungo got up from the control panel and stumbled closer to the little bear, fists scraping against the stone floor as his hunched back ruined his natural stride. Walking was always a bit of a chore for him nowadays, with the curvature of his spine warped from his own ongoing mutations. Still, maybe the tiny bear can't hear him properly when he was so far away.

"Sssoviet. Union." Klungo accentuated in a tone used for pets or very small children. " _U. Sss. Sss. R._ "

Still nothing. The mutated scientist exhaled through his teeth and began tapping the side of his face.

"...Russsia?"

Tooty laughed nervously, a kind of halting, awkward titter as Klungo watched her. Tooty like most small children believed herself to be a child genius, much smarter than her dopey brother, so her revealed ignorance on Klungo's home struck a minor blow to her ego.

"I...don't think I've heard of any of those places, Mr. Klungo..." Tooty admitted.

Klungo broke into a grin regardless, and Tooty cringed at bit at the unnatural, twisted canines that parted his lips like broken shards of porcelain. He rather liked the sound of "Mr. Klungo". He'd prefer "Dr. Klungo" (or Dr. Klaus O, but he wasn't sure where his brain pulled that name from) but it was better than nothing.

"Far off country. Far from Isle of Hagsss. Klungo come here to do experimentsss. Sssomething happened with experimentsss, ssso ended up working for Missstresss. That ssstory of Klungo'sss life." the scientist said with a flourish of his arm.

It was around this time it dawned on Tooty that Klungo wasn't talking the way he was because of a lack of intelligence. It was because he had some sort of accent as well as his aforementioned mouth deformities. A " **Russsia** " accent. Klungo was picking his words carefully because he was trying to find the smallest words lest his speech dissolve into incoherent hissing.

"You know..." Tooty continued, her distraction working. He was away from the controls now and he seemed to be in a good enough mood to keep talking about himself. Her dumb brother needed all the help he could get. Knowing Banjo, he had his head stuck in a grate somewhere in that old hag's lair. His bird friend didn't seem too smart either, even if she was really loud and obnoxious.

"I'm unsure what you are. You look like the Gruntlings that I've seen walking around, but you also look like a Grublin. Are you an ogre? A troll? Do they have trolls in Russssia?"

Klungo gave a small snort. They did have trolls in Russia but he wasn't one of them.

"Human, actually." he said with a grin.

Tooty's reaction - a blank stare that slowly sank into a deep horror the moment her brain realized just what Klungo was saying and just _how_ mutated he actually was - made Klungo's smile falter a bit. That was usually the reaction he got, but it didn't hurt any less the fifth time he received it.

"Oh no, don't worry, Young Bear! Masshine didn't caussse thisss!" he said, tapping the right side of his face with a broken claw, his finger just under his swollen eye. Tooty grimaced - she was beginning to notice things like how one of his hands had a vestigial pinky finger and how he had scraggly hairs still clinging for dear life on his chin and head - but any minute spent talking was a minute spent away from the controls, away from figuring out the coordinates in order to steal her youth and beauty away.

"Did...did Grunty do that to you?" Tooty asked. She was trying to pick her words out carefully; Klungo seemed good-natured but she was afraid of him having as bad of a temper as his master. No need to insult the creature holding her captive. Especially when he was big enough to _eat_ her.

"No, Klungo did. Experimentsss. Magic. Life forssse. All of thessse can corrupt if not careful." he said in far too cheerful of a tone considering the circumstances. Honestly, he just felt happy he could discuss this with someone who wasn't Misstress, his creation/son Clanker, the workers in the Rusty Bucket loading bay, or some judgemental mutant crabs that lived in Clanker's home.

"Klungo... _wasssn't_. That why Klungo built massshine. To fix problem. Missstresss very interested in project too. Would not make much progresss otherwissse." He patted the machine a couple times for accentuation.

Thank goodness for small miracles, Klungo thought to himself. If Gruntilda didn't find him half-mutated, cut off from the outside world in his lab working on his talking robot whale, who knows what would've happened! Clanker even has his own home now, chained up and free to eat as much garbage as he pleases. Clanker seemed fine now. He still needed work though.

"Aaaah...so it sounds like both you and the witch have the same goal. Both of you want to be beautiful." The child concluded, nodding her head.

The ogre guffawed at the notion. His harsh, barking laughter sounded like a hippo with stomach problems. "Klungo will sssettle for humanity. Not like Missstresss! Missstresss doing thisss all for Missstresss. Klungo doing thisss for sssomeone elssse."

"Really? Who?" Tooty asked. By now, Tooty had gone from just using the scientist as a means to help her brother to being genuinely curious in Klungo's life. Klungo didn't seem like a social butterfly, with or without his mutations. Did he have any scientist friends?

It was then that Klungo walked closer over to Tooty so that there was barely any space between them save for the laser grid, looked around to make sure that Gruntilda wasn't going to come into the lab, and dug inside his labcoat pocket and pulled out a tiny piece of gold. It was a small golden circle kept safe in a little plastic bag to keep it free from contaminants.

No, **_a ring_** , Tooty corrected herself, too small to fit on any of his fingers. Tiny diamonds sparkled in the green and yellow glow of the lab. Klungo cradled the ring gently in his hands, a precious, lovely treasure he kept hidden even from his Mistress. It was probably the only thing of value the scientist had in his possessions.

"Little bear can keep sssecret, yess? Not sssure if Misstress know or even care, but Klungo have a Mrssss. Klungo back home. Might not want ugly troll or goblin or whatever husssband, ssso once masshine work, Klungo will be better. Klungo can ssseee Mrs. Klungo! Klungo...I..." his voice began to falter a bit. His smile began to break up. He gritted his teeth in pain and hugged the ring close to him.

"...I missss her very much." he said in a voice that didn't belong to Klungo, the abused bumbling minion of a witch that lived in a tower, but to Dr. Nikolas Oserov, the missing researcher - presumed dead by most of his peers - who was inches away from the breakthrough of the century regarding the properties and biologies of lifeforces and souls in places like the Isle o' Hags, Crocodile Island, and Timber Island before everything started to go _wrong_ ** _._**

He took a deep breath and shifted his weight a bit, and Tooty wasn't sure how, but suddenly he had the appearance of an incredibly broken, tired man who chased a dream, ignored several key warning signs, and now was working for a monster while looking like one himself.

"I haven't talked to her in yearsss." he said, dragging a hand across his face. His voice now sounded tiny. Exhausted. His accent was still there, but somehow he sounded less "minion-y" to Tooty's ears. "Cut off contact. Firssst I didn't call her because I thought it wasss contagiousss, now I won't call her because I don't want her to sssee me like thisss. No, better off thinking I wasss dead in that case. Ssshe'sss probably given up by now..."

The little girl had nothing to say as the creature in front of her struggled with his own emotions and memories, physically restraining himself to keep himself from breaking down and crying. He knew - he just _knew_ \- that if he lost control now, he'd be inconsolable and drained for too long of a period of time. Not when Gruntilda was already angry at him earlier today.  
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Yes...Mistress Gruntilda_ _ **would**_ _be mad if Klungo suddenly stopped working..._

With that in mind, that tiny little magical suggestion in his mind that kept all of Grunty's minions in check, he quickly caught himself, suddenly embarrassed at that brief glimpse of vulnerability, and the person he once was became buried again inside of Klungo, mutated bootlicking lackey of Mistress Grunty. Fangs set in a snarl, expression unreadable but strangely frightening, he shoved the ring back in his pocket, turned away from Tooty, and started stomping back to his work station.

"Wait, Klungo!" Tooty pleaded. She couldn't help but feel she just did something _incredibly_ wrong. "Do you have a favorite color, a favorite band! A favorite fruit? Hobbies? _Video games?_ Please, don't go back to work!"

" _Do sssvidaniya_ , little bear. Talk over. Wassste enough time." Klungo responded in the deadpan tone usually used by customer service representatives, his hunched back turned to her.

Tooty continued to call out, but whatever she said - from pleas to shouted apologies - was aggressively ignored. She'll tire herself out eventually, he thought sorely to himself. Klungo had learned to tune people out over the years, even before this whole mess had happened and people were calling him and his research on soul manipulation " _crazy_ ". You could never create a soul out of thin air, that's _insane_. He heard it all. He's heard so many things...

Inside of his lab coat, the weight of the tiny gold ring burned against his chest, a tiny burst of cold fire that kept bringing back those unlocked memories. They always hurt, memories. But in time, they disappeared back into the foggy recesses of his mutated brain and he could focus on the present. That was the blessing of having the DNA properties of a Gruntling; they weren't too developed on long-term memory or general intelligence.

A stray wind from the other room blew in the smells of summer into his lab. It was a beautiful summer day outside, full of buzzing bees and blooming flowers. If this experiment worked, he'd have enough pride to go outside on a day like this.

He had to get back to work.


End file.
